Minimising food illness and waste is critically important to consumers, regulators, the food industry and the Australian economy.

Proper cold chain practice maintains the safety and quality of food products from producer to consumer. This covers how they are:

• handled
• transported
• stored.

This is important across Australia and for exports. For example:

• the USA FDA assess the safety of Australian Cold Chain when deciding whether to allow perishable food to be imported
• exports to Asia are partly determined by the quality of the Australian cold chain operations.

Download the Australian Cold Chain Guidelines [PDF 1.3 mb]. These were developed by the AFGC in consultation with industry in 2017.